Entrepreneurial Interest and Entrepreneurial Competence among Spanish Youth: An Analysis with Artificial Neural Networks

Studies of the socio-economic function of entrepreneurship have emphasized the critical role that entrepreneurial competence and its implementation play at different stages of the education system. In this paper, as a research objective, we seek to determine the entrepreneurial interest of Spanish youth aged between 15 and 18 years of age enrolled in formal secondary education programs, an initial stage in the development of entrepreneurship. A previously validated ad hoc questionnaire is applied through simple random sampling to 1764 students at secondary school in Spain. A descriptive cross-sectional study is carried out. The analysis is done with Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), a technique that reduces the high dimensionality of data through Cooperative Maximum Likelihood Hebbian Learning (CMLHL), applying neurocomputational methods to the educational sciences. We find as key results that Spanish youth express a medium level of interest in entrepreneurship. Analysis with ANNs shows that education in entrepreneurial competence is an influential aspect of interest in entrepreneurship. As a conclusion, our results suggest that educational and curricular reforms must be undertaken to promote the development of entrepreneurial competence at various stages of education in order to increase interest in entrepreneurship.